A former prosecutor has revealed that the Office of the State Attorney of the Second Judicial Circuit had an explicitly racist policy published to assistant prosecutors there. The policy, which was printed in a memo and posted in the Jefferson County prosecutor’s office, explicitly directed prosecutors to seek harsher penalties when the Defendants for No Valid Driver’s License charges were “Hispanic.”
It’s shocking for the office to have such a policy, and even more shocking they actually wrote it up and printed it out. The elected prosecutor likely did not know about it, this was posted in one of the branch offices of a 6-county circuit, but it is still appalling that such a document existed. The optics are particularly bad where the prosecutors in the office are all white.
The article does not contain a direct response from the prosecutors office regarding the allegations, though elected State Attorney Jack Campbell has argued against stereotyping. Sadly, the actions of his office to not match his words on the matter.
Former ASA Mackenzie Hayes, who revealed the policy, shortly left the 2nd Circuit SAO.
Tweets from Our Tallahassee include a video: https://twitter.com/OurTallahassee/status/1648744747895250961
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